


Stolen

by JackBivouac



Series: Dungeon Online [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work, Pathfinder (Roleplaying Game), Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Video Game World, Blood and Gore, Bondage, F/M, Forced Orgasm, Gang Rape, Group Sex, Human Sacrifice, Interspecies Sex, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, Other, Rape, Ritual Public Sex, Tentacle Rape, Vines, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-10 01:25:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackBivouac/pseuds/JackBivouac
Summary: 32 beta testers are trapped in the virtual D&D world of Dungeon Online, this is their story.Someone asked about an explicit campaign, so this is a take on that. Stage 1 is an adventure for players levels 1-4 deviating/derived from a Kingmaker campaign. Chapters containing graphic rape are titled "Contains Rape."





	1. There Is No Logout from Dungeon Online

Cardinal spawned somewhere in the woods of the Greenbelt. The thick tangle of brambles behind him gave way to the large clearing in front of him, its border partially defined by ruined stone pillars. The side of a towering, moss-covered boulder had been carved with the likeness of a stag, its antlers drooping from its weathered face to frame the entrance of a cave. 

With all those pillars and antlers, the cleric could've sworn this was an abandoned shrine to Erastil the Hunter. The ten foot, growling grizzly bear stalking out from the cave threw a strikethrough into that theory. Abandoned, 'twas not.

He had two options, run or fight. Truthfully, Cardinal had no desire to kill an animal, virtual or not. But one of the quests was to secure the titular Stolen Lands from the various and sundry threats therein.

“I should've played a shifter,” Cardinal muttered. In his muttering indecision, Dungeon Online auto-selected “Fight.”

The grizzly roared and charged. Its claws ripped through his scale mail into his arm, flinging droplets of blood.

“MotherFUCK that hurts!” The fuck kind of beta was this?

Without waiting for a rhetorical answer, Cardinal slashed his dagger deep across the bear's muzzle.

The wounded beast roared, lashing out with tooth and claw. But blinded by rage and pain, the potentially fatal blows landed awkwardly, Cardinal's buckler turning each away.

He rolled into another slash, carelessly. The grizzly's great maw snapped shut on his guarding arm.

Cardinal screamed, his consciousness threatening to bleed out with the rest of him. Wrong, this was all horribly wrong.

“Logout! Logout!” he cried, forcing up the menu. The option was nowhere to be found.

Bone crunched, blood splurting through the grizzly's teeth. Cardinal fell to the ground, his severed arm dangling from the bear's mouth. He was still staring in blank-eyed shock as the bear's paw caved in his skull.

A world away, one of the thirty-two beta testers died in his Soul Translator. In the shrine of Erastil, a bear devoured his avatar and fleeting consciousness for sustenance.

#*#*#*#*

Tanger, the last to log back in, spawned in a field of long grasses rustling in the wind. On the northern horizon, the wooden palisade and watchtowers of Oleg's Trading Post gazed down protectively from its post upon the hill. 

He or they hefted a heavy, bulging sack of loot and bounty over one shoulder. The side of his ribs burned and ached from his last encounter. 

He wouldn't lie--the unchangeable pain toggle was kinda irritating, but he had to admire the dedication to realism. Besides, he’d just rest it off when he got back to the Post.

Crunch! Tanger stopped in his tracks, reaching over his other shoulder for his sword handle. Two hundred feet across from him crouched a shape barely perceptible in the grass but easily discerned by the floating green diamond and gamertag. “Daffi” nodded at him, twin daggers flashing in either hand.

Tanger raised his offending foot. A short, curved rib bone broken in two pieces.

The very earth shifted. A giant trapdoor spider the size of a pony lunged at the rogue. Scimitar-like mandibles pierced through either side of Daffi’s leg.  
They screamed in agony, dragged into the spider’s den before they could land a single strike. The trapdoor shut atop the spider and its prey, muffling Daffi’s shrieks.

“Shit!” said Tanger, dropping his sack. He grabbed hold of the trapdoor, heaving with all his might.

Pain lanced through his ribs. His arms shook with strain. His fingers, slick with sweat and dirt, slipped from the door’s edge. The rogue’s muffled cries died away.

“Daffi!” The fighter dug his fingers into the webbed dirt and roared, veins popping in his arms.

The door shook and shuddered inches up from the earth. Tanger braced through the pain exploding from his side and forced up the door. Dirt showered over a bleeding, oozing tangle of human and spider stuck to the door’s back.

Daffi, marginally more alive than their thickly splattered armor and gory shreds of a leg suggested, drove their daggers through the spider’s largest, fist-sized eyes with a feral grunt. The spider twitched and stilled.

It fell from the door down the shaft of its lair. Taking Daffi with it.

Tanger, flooded with adrenaline, snapped out his arm. His hand seized around the rogue’s forearm. The spider’s limp mandibles slipped from their leg. Its corpse tumbled to the floor some twenty five feet below the surface.

Tanger and Daffi collapsed in the grass on the den’s edge.

“Thanks,” Daffi panted through chattering teeth.

“Don’t mention it,” Tanger panted back. The pain was a bitch and, as he’d discovered earlier, there was a bug preventing logout during combat. “Do you mind if I crawl down to loot the den?”

“I’m genuinely worried this game’s realism would break my neck if I tried it, so knock yourself out. But you’ve gotta show me if you find something good.”

Tanger flashed them a grin. “Sure thing. Watch my sack.”

The thick webbing along the walls made the climb far easier than he’d expected. A few bodies remained at the bottom of the shaft, mostly animal, but one human. It was dressed in deeply compromised leathers, carrying a rusted short sword and ten in gold. Around its gristly neck was a small silver amulet engraved with a stag.

“What do you make of this?” asked Tanger, holding out the amulet.

“Not...worth...shit,” Daffi huffed.

“Hey, are you ok?”

Daffi bit their lips, then gave their head the slightest shake. “Tried standing...almost...passed out.”

And they couldn’t logout, or they’d just respawn here in the exact same condition. The spider wouldn’t respawn, but who knew what player, if any, would be in this part of the Greenbelt to help out.

“Want me to carry you back?”

They gave a hesitant nod. Tanger nodded back and handed them his sack.

“You hold this. I’ll hold you.”

The Post’s market yard was surprisingly full, not with merchants but the green diamonds of players muttering in small groups in the long shadows of the walls and watchtowers. The rest of them were in the main hall, hunched over tables and glowering over drink.

“What is up with everyone?” asked Tanger, his voice only loud enough for Daffi to hear. When they said nothing, he glanced down to the sack-bearing rogue in his arms. They’d quietly passed out from the pain. “Oh. Ouch.”

He stopped at Oleg’s bar at the back of the hall, curling Daffi into the crook of one arm and hefting his sack onto the bartop. The stained fabric loosed at the top. Four kobold heads and a bushel of radishes rolled out onto the other side of the bar, old Oleg frantically scrambling to catch them.

“Sorry,” said Tanger, shrugging sheepishly. “I didn’t know they’d opened it. That’s for the kobold bounty. We’d also like to get some rooms.”

“Begging your pardon sir,” said Oleg, climbing back up to his knees, “but the bounty is for Sootscale kobolds. These are merely...decapitated kobolds. As for rooms, as the chartered rangers of these wilds, the old barracks are at your disposal, free of charge.”

“Great!” Tanger called over his shoulder, already jogging for the door.

The barracks stood two stories high under the southeastern watchtower. Sixteen cots had been crammed onto either floor, along with a deceptively small inventory locker. 

Tanger carried Daffi toward the first two cots with unclaimed and therefore unlocked lockers. He laid them out as gently as he could while glowering in confusion at the menu. He could find the option for rest. He could not find the option to logout.


	2. Contains Rape

In the last rays of dusklight, Seafa paced the creaky planks of the parapet with such plank-murdering intent that she or they scared off any other potential pacers from the northern wall. Who could blame her? 

Not only were they trapped in the game, but Seafa lived alone in the kind of apartment complex where neighbors went out of their to avoid each other in the halls while aggravating the shit out of each other behind the walls. Her corpse wouldn't be discovered until next month at the earliest, rotting in her Soul Translator when the landlord came to aggravate her over the rent.

Her shoulders shook with building tension. Maybe it was better she went out like this, dying in blaze of mental glory in the middle of a quest whenever brain death sent her avatar t-posing out of here. Speaking of blazes, these Stolen Lands better of had some kind of weed around here or she was calling bullshit on this game's “realism.”

The shifter froze, nose twitching. That wasn’t weed smoke. That was real smoke.

Seafa ran down through the watchtower, feet flying fast as a deer’s as they shifted into hooves. As did her clenched fists. Antlers sprouted from her head.

“Fire! Fire!” she yelled.

Though difficult to see on the dark side of the Post, black smoke now billowed along the western palisade wall. Where there was no door. The only way in and out were the heavy wooden doors on the southern wall, a design flaw so obvious Seafa had no doubt it was partially to blame for the failure of the original fort.

Players were scrambling to open them now. The shifter really should’ve been more specific.

“Not like that! Stop! It’s a trap!”

But the metal bar had already been raised. The doors burst open, bowling over the first responders like the mindless pins they were imitating.

Five cloaked and hooded arsonists galloped in on horses. They tossed Molotov cocktails at every flammable structure in the Post, namely, all of them.

“Fuck you!” screamed Seafa, charging antlers-first at the lead arsonist. 

He screamed as well, her antlers goring him through to the other side. The arsonist fell off the horse and her antlers, leaving her antlers smeared red. Seafa roared in bloody triumph. The horse, she let ride.

The most XP-hungry players converged on the remaining bandits amidst the growing conflagration. Seafa got the heck out of there.

As she bolted through the long grass, hidden blades slashed through the flank of either leg. Seafa staggered, grunting.

This...was it. This was her blaze. Maybe even her ticket out of here if she died. She pivoted toward the three ambushers, hooded shadows rising before the burning Post.

Seafa charged the first assailant, goring her through with her antlers. The assailant twitched and slipped from the barbs.

“Fucking bitch!” screamed a survivor. He and his buddy came at Seafa, hacking with an ax in either hand.

Seafa’s hooved fists flew, punching away the axes. The ambushers, thrown off her, left an opening. She gored through the chest of slower of them and followed through with punches to cave in both sides of their ribcage.

Before the crushed corpse could fall from her antlers, the last ambusher roared. Seafa couldn’t even turn her head under the dead weight of this body.

Thwack! The back of her skull exploded from blunt trauma. Her gored victim hit the ground first, Seafa’s antlers retreating with her hp as she blacked out.

“Oh no, you’re not dying that easy, bitch,” growled Bydon, bandit of the Stag Lord. He crouched low out of the line of sight of the rest of the fleeing rangers and drew the rope from his rucksack.

Bydon bound the girl’s forearms tight behind her back, hands dangling limp under her elbows. Her ankles, he bound with a hobbling rope. He fastened a last line around her throat in a leash and collar.

He dragged the shifter from the field into the seclusion of the woods. Bydon bound the end of her leash around a tree and cut through her clothes with a dagger, inspecting the wares. She was all curves, full, lush, and tantalizing.

The bandit cursed under his breath. The others would never let him hear the end of it if he murdered her without giving them a taste. For now, he’d have to avenge his fallen comrades by other means.

Bydon turned the bitch onto her stomach and unbuckled his pants. It was easy getting stiff rubbing his cock between those soft, rounded asscheeks. He set the head of his turgid cock against the mouth of her ass. It’d be a tight fit, possibly painful enough to wake her.

Bydon shoved a wad of her cut-up clothes into her mouth and forced his dick through her tiny, puckered hole. His captive grunted, gagged, and writhed to life under him.

“Good, you’re awake. I can finally enjoy this,” Bydon growled through his teeth. He grabbed hold of the shifter’s leash and yanked, choking the bound girl as his dick pounded her anus into the forest floor.

White-hot pain lanced from Seafa’s stuffed anus, wracking her all the way up her spine to the patch of skull between her eyes. Her bared chest heaved against the forest floor, burning and breathless as sticks and leaves scratched through the sensitive skin. Knees and booted feet kicked and scuffed in the dirt, arms and ankles straining against the coils of coarse rope.

But no matter how hard Seafa bucked and writhed under her rapist, she couldn’t throw him and his shaft-ripping cock out of her tortured ass. Unable to logout, she was forced to take every wall-pulverizing thrust as the bandit wracked her body into a broken doll of helpless, quivering agony.

It couldn’t get any worse...until it did. Hot, burning cum as real as the real thing exploded into her clenching anus. 

Seafa whimpered into her gag as the bandit pumped her full to the last drop of his seed. She shuddered and laid still under the sweaty weight of his body. Her will shattered, tears of shame streaked her filthed face.

She had no more resistance to put up when the bandit finally hauled her to her feet and dragged her behind him on the leash through the dark forest. Her naked body shivered in the night’s chill, but her boots still protected her feet from the branches snapping underfoot.

Fire glowed orange through the trees ahead. They caught the bark of laughter first, followed by grunts and muffled cries. 

Five other bandits had survived. They clustered in two groups around the campfire. 

Three were fucking some hapless girl “Maya.” Her bound, squirming body was sandwiched between two of theirs, dicks stuffing both holes between her jerking legs. The third had her head in his hands, raping her throat from a squat.

The other two spitroasted the twink “Byza” between them. One slapped their impaled ass while the other held their throat in a chokehold. Byza’s hands had been bound as though in prayer behind their back, shutting down any hope of spellcasting.

“Got one more here,” called out Seafa’s bandit, tying her leash around a new tree.

“Great!” laughed the bandit in Byza’s mouth. He pulled out, his cock still erect. “Let’s get her pregnant, make more little bandits for Stag.”

Seafa’s bandit grunted noncommittally but shoved her drained body to the ground. He flipped her over onto her back and bound arms, holding her pinned by the shoulders.

Byza’s bandit grinned, lurid in the flickering shadows. He pushed Seafa’s strengthless legs up by the back of the thighs, throwing her knees over his shoulders. The shifter let out a whimpered protest.

The bandit laughed as though tickled and drove his cock into her helplessly exposed pussy. Seafa shrieked and sobbed into her gag, squirming under her new rapist and the pinning hands of her old. Her body was even more sensitive after the first, shaft-pummeling assault.

In only a few pistoning thrusts, her squeezing pussy turned traitor. Slick dripped from her slit with each squelching pound. Her walls quivered in helpless, tightening spasms around her rapist’s dick.

“This little cumslut’s squeezing me!” laughed the bandit, rutting her even harder up the cunt.

Seafa shut her crying eyes. The loss of sight only focused her nerves on the convulsions wracking her shaft. Sheer, revolting pleasure exploded through her clenched gut. Seafa gurgled on her gag, her back arching between her two captors, toes curling and hands grasping senselessly.

“Yeah, take it you filthy, worthless whore.” The bandit gushed his cum into her pussy, her womb with a guttural moan.

Seafa shamefully echoed his sound into her gagging wad. Though her eyes were unseeing, an option appeared in her mind. “Rest.” She passed out before the bandit had pulled out of her sloppy cumhole.


	3. Contains Rape

The AI wasn’t a total dick. Despite Tanger and Daffi having their rest disturbed by the conflagration consuming the Post, they awoke fully restored in HP and bodily functions. They ran from the blaze into the surrounding field with the rest of the players.

It was almost...beautiful, such an imposing wooden edifice dancing with flames that roared into the night sky, spraying sparks like fireflies. Tanger watched transfixed by the rolling dance of destruction, the solid wall of its heat baking the dirt on his body to crumbling ash.

“Tanger. Tanger!” said Daffi, pulling his arm backward.

“Huh?”

CR-EEEEAK! The burning timbers twisted and screamed. They crashed down with a thunderous quake. Flashing sparks sprayed into the fields below, driven deep by the wave of searing air. Instead of winking out, they caught hold of the long-bladed grass.

“Run!” Daffi screamed.

Not without reason, everyone reached the same conclusion. They raced into the forest, filling the pitch black darkness with a frantic milling of green diamonds. Low, crackling heat followed after them, torching the dry kindling around their ankles.

Tanger grabbed Daffi's arm as they stumbled through the backlit, smoking forest. He barely noticed the branches whipping and tearing across his skin, all focus zeroed in for a single sound.

Rushing rapids beat against rock. Tanger and Daffi broke through the last of the brush and onto the slick banks of the mighty Thorn River.

“We have to get closer!” Daffi shouted over the churning waves.

Tanger nodded, his eyes on a fighter outfitted like himself, “Garn,” and another rogue in Daffi's leaf armor, “Amber.” The pair were already scaling down the smallest boulder on the bank. But the rapids had worn the wet side as smooth as glass.

The fighter slipped. The rogue's arm blurred in motion. Amber seized his arm. But Garn weighed well over his or their carrying capacity. Both bodies hit the raging river. The waters battered them over and under until their green diamonds winked out of sight.

“Tanger! The fire!” The flames lit Daffi's panicked face in lurid ripples. Heat blasted them both from one side, the river's spray chilling them to the bone on the other.

“I got an idea,” said Tanger, tossing them one end of a rope from his pack. “You ever seen a bolas?”

“Oh, fuck.”

Tanger tied his end around his waist. “Slap it with as much mud as you can!”

Daffi tied theirs. The two of them slapped as much mud as they could over the rope as they scrambled to opposite sides of the boulder. The heavier, more heavily armored Tanger slipped.

The fighter yelped and clung to the rope, tumbling toward churning death. On the other side of the boulder, Daffi jumped.

The rope jerked and caught, dangling them both over the crushing rapids. Icy water sprayed through the clothes. Flames roared behind them, baking the mud rather than burning the rope.

“This mighta worked,” Daffi shouted between cupped, muddy hands, “but we sure look stupid af.”

Tanger whooped, pumping his muddy fists.

#*#*#*#*

The Thorn River rapids chilled to a steady current as they flowed south and out from the Greenbelt forests. They deposited Cyber’s sodden, battered, but breathing body on the gravel bank where the Thorn joined the Shrike.

Half-conscious, Cyber dragged themself up from the watery darkness into the relatively drier darkness up the bank. They rolled over onto their back upon the smooth, wet stones. The shifter’s breath caught in their throat. The night sky was alight with stars.

Cyber stared, transfixed by the twinkling pins pricking through that vast, endless ocean above. They’d never seen anything like it, never breathed in such crisp, clear night. Despite the game-breaking bugs and frankly alarming lack of response from the developers, the sheer beauty of this impossible world eased the panic from their heart and mind.

Small claws clicked lightly over the stones. Cyber struggled to their side and onto bruised, trembling arms. Antlers sprouted from their head, strengthless hands and feet shifting into hooves.

The starlit night illuminated the quasi-draconic outlines of four short, soot-scaled humanoids. Kobolds, armed with small wooden spears. The three-foot reptilians froze, tails in mid-swish.

“Did they see us?” asked one.

“Did you see us?” called out another.

“I-yes, but…”

“Charge!” cried the third.

The four charged with a roar and spray of stones. Before Cyber could rise off their knees and hooved hands, the kobolds fell upon them with sharp whacks from the blunt ends of their spears.

“Stop! Please!” cried the shifter, pain bursting anew in their back and limbs. They collapsed under the beating, curling themself into a protective ball.

Thwack! A spear butted against their temple. Cyber passed out with a grunt. Their antlers retreated, hooves softening back into hands and booted feet.

“Hey! Where’d the weapons go?” asked the fourth kobold.

All four stopped, staring in puzzlement at the unmoving body. The first flipped the pointy end of his spear down. He dragged the tip through the human’s thin hide armor and clothes. The sodden fabric peeled back, revealing taut, wet flesh.

The second crouched down by the human’s crotch. He tilted his head to the side, then raised up one limp knee for a better view. “Are all humans that big?”

“That...that doesn’t make them better than us!” said Mikmek, leader of the warrior pack. “I’ll prove it! Tie them up!”

The three kobolds trussed the human like the deer they’d resembled with their wrists and ankles bound around a spear. Only after they’d finished did it occur to them that their captive’s back would drag along the ground.

“More rope!”

“More rope!”

“More rope!”

They tied the human again, this time lashing together their knees and elbows above their wrist and ankle bonds. Mikmek gave their captive a cursory kick to the butt.

“Huh,” said Mikmek, his tapered dick stiffening at the feel of their firm, warm asscheek under his foot. “P-pick ‘em up.”

Two grunted and huffed and hefted the carrying spear onto their shoulders. The human’s back was fully suspended off the ground this time, their intriguing ass-end at Mikmek’s dick level.

Mikmek cleared his throat, grabbed the human’s slightly swaying hips and shoved his cock up their asshole. Warm, so warm, warmer than any kobold. Mikmek squeaked and pistoned furiously, jackhammering in chase of that sweet, tight heat.

The kobold left standing around observed his leader. He sidled around to the human’s front-end. There was nothing draconic in the least in the soft-skinned angles of that open-mouthed face. But kobold see, kobold do.

He grabbed the human’s upside down head and pushed his cock through their lips. The kobold squealed at the soft, wet heat in their mouth. There really was something draconic about humans after all. He thrust as furiously as his leader.

The captive’s anus, particularly sensitive and responsive with their reasoning mind out of commission, squeezed hot and tight around Mikmek’s kobold dick. Mikmek shrieked, swelling in orgasm.

Burning seed gushed from the tiny hole at the tip of his cock into the captive’s helpless ass. At their other end, kobold cum burst down their throat. They senselessly swallowed it down.

Mikmek pulled out from the human, giving their ass one last, possessing slap and squeeze. He watched as his cum slopped and dribbled from their winking anus between the cleave of their asscheeks.

“Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys. For fucking.”

They were kobolds, not barbarians.


	4. Contains Rape

Dawn was a gray and misty affair. Seafa woke to pangs and growls of false hunger in her belly at the woodsmoke smell of the campfire no different from a pizza oven. She stirred, but coarse and heavy ropes kept her helpless and squirming over the carpet of fallen leaves. The sodden fabric in her mouth muffled her despairing groan.

“Bydon, looks like your cumslut’s ready for breakfast,” a bandit laughed.

Bydon, the bandit who’d kidnapped her, stomped over and untied her leash from the tree trunk. He dragged her by said leash, choking and writhing across the wet leaves to a log by the campfire. Seafa’s eyes blurred with burning, raging tears.

Maya and Byza, both of their hands bound in anti-casting position, were already draped naked and filthy across the log. A bandit each fed them cock, forcing the players’ heads to swallow their dicks to the hilt. Another pair of bandits pounded their rest-restored asses, tearing through their healed and tightened walls all over again.

Bydon threw Seafa onto the log beside Byza. Smack! She grunted as he gave her ass a stinging slap. Then another. And another, another, another. Until she was sobbing, her asscheeks red and burning, snot and tears leaking from her miserable face. What the fuck had she done to deserve this?

“If you’re not gonna feed that cum dump, I will,” said the last bandit. He jogged from the horses over to Seafa’s front-end and removed her gag. He grabbed her head in both hands.

The corners of Seafa’s mouth curled with the slightest upward tilt. Antlers lanced out from her skull. The bandit gurgled blood.

“Bitch!”

“Bitch!”

“You bitch!”

The bandits screamed, the gored bandit collapsing in a pool of bright red blood. The sticky-faced shifter laughed darkly onto her gag. Until kicks, punches, and stomps crushed and bruised her naked body against the rough, unyielding log under her.

Someone’s cock tore through her dry, tightened pussy. She shrieked through her running nose. The sound was lost under the boots trampling her against the log. All while the bandit pistoning her pussy walls bloody ground her cunt into the wood.

Seafa’s nerves burst into splinters of shooting pain all across her helplessly bound body. The game’s cataclysmic flood of agony was too much for her organic mind to compute. Her body exploded into core-wracking spasms of sheer, white-hot feeling.

“You filthy whore! You dirty cunt!” cried the bandit railing her quivering, clenching pussy. His fingernails pierced through the soft skin of her hips as he tightened his grip and rammed her all the harder.

Seafa’s nasal shriek twisted into a gagged, animal moan as the bandit’s raping dick forced her deepest, most carnal self to the shameful pleasure of his will. Her mindlessly dominated cunt clenched around his cock, wringing and squelching desperately for his seed. 

Cum burst from the bandit’s cock into her orgasming flesh. He pumped her quaking pussy full to the womb, her bound hands grasping uselessly and toes curling in the wet leaves under him. Her body, beaten black and blue, still trembled in his hands as he pulled out.

Seafa slumped into a deeper draping over the log as the last rigidity left her body with the bandit’s dick. Her ragged breath sent pain stitching up from every corner of her body. Tears leaked soundlessly from her eyes.

The group of bandits moved away from the log and its three drained captives. They spoke in hushed but clearly argumentative tones, likely over what to do with the one still capable of murder.

“Y-you shouldn’t have done that,” Byza croaked between their own tears.

“Too...late...now,” Seafa sniffled, still bittered and boiling.

Maya said nothing at all, her eyes fixed on the bandit corpse. 

Seafa spat, splattering his dumbfounded face. Her only regret was not being able to kill them all. And, possibly, blowing the element of surprise.

#*#*#*#*

Jade staggered through the smoke and fog along the riverbank, stones skittering with every slogged step. She or they only knew where the water was from the muffled sound of the plunks. The gray haze was so thick she couldn’t see five feet in front of her.

Which was why she hadn’t stopped moving all night. The fire, likely still burning, had to have displaced everyone and everything in the northern Greenbelt. All of them more dangerous than a fey-blooded sorcerer.

Part of that was on the beta. “Fey” was the only bloodline arcana source available to the sorcerer class just as any clerics had to select “Pharasma” for deity and domain powers.

Jade deliberately sent a stone plunking with a wobbly kick. This fucking beta. She’d been out-of-her-mind ecstatic when the delivery truck dropped off the brand, spanking new Soul Translator at her trailer along with the game. Now she was trapped in it. Served her right for thinking she’d gotten something outta Big Money.

Hell, this beta probably didn’t even have a story. It was all some kind of illegal human experiment getting a pass cause it’d targeted those folks who didn’t matter. Jade was gonna die and the research based on it would get a commendation.

Shadows moved in the distant fog. Jade dropped into a crouch, the breath caught in her throat. If they held very still, she’d be mistaken for a rock by anyone looking this way.

No one was. Armored feet scuffled against stone. Blades clanked and scraped. A creature hissed and roared.

Battle laid ahead. Just as Jade began the creep backward, the haze whorled and thinned enough to spot two green diamonds. Players. As everyone worth their salt knew, misery, conspiracy, and existential dread “loved” company.

Jade crept forward instead. Gravel gave way to rubble and sand under her feet. “Steel,” a dagger-and-shield wielding cleric stood opposite “Tyrian,” a fighter holding their falchion in two hands. Blood ran down their arm and between their fingers.

A six-foot long shadow coiled in the whorling fog between them. Serpentine eyes flashed yellow over a fanged maw.

Jade bolted into the clearing, hands and fingers clawed with building magic.

“Freeze, bitch,” she growled, parched throat cracking. She thrust her twisted hands out at the dragon-headed tatzlwyrm tearing through the mist. Bands of glowing green magic seized vise-like around its head.

The tatzlwyrm’s lunge ended in a coiled slump, its draconic head swaying under the magic dazing. Steel and Tyrian charged. Steel plunged her dagger through the beast’s eye. Tyrian’s falchion severed its howling head from its lashing body. The body continued to snake along the ground.

“You’re welcome,” Jade croaked, brushing off her simple, sooty robe as she straightened.

“The mate!” yelled Steel, running toward the armorless sorcerer as fast as she could.

The tatzylwyrm’s mate was faster. Two green-scaled arms seized Jade from behind. Grasping claws punched through her sides. The sorcerer choked on her blood-spewing scream.

She didn’t have long left for this world. Tyrian shifted their grip to run. Neither did the wyrm. They threw their momentum into a sliding slash.

Their falchion ripped down the full length of the serpentine’s body, erupting a red line of blood between its emerald scales. The tatzlwyrm fell apart like a dropped sub sandwich. Its heavy head pinned Jade down with it.

“Hold still,” said Steel, sheathing her dagger.

Jade snorted and huffed for breath, her lungs crushed by the fallen beast. Tyrian dropped their falchion, nearby. They grabbed her forearms and pulled until her shredded body dragged out free.

She gasped and snivelled in pain, darkness swimming at the edges of her sight. Steel squeezed her shoulder and held up a spiral amulet at the end of a wood-beaded rosary.

“By the will of Pharasma,” muttered the cleric. Glowing blue energy burst from the holy symbol and into the three players.

Jade gasped at the sudden vanishment of all pain, replaced by an intense heat and itching as though the cleric had emptied an entire hill of fire ants into her wounds. She doubled over, shivering in the sand. Her breath came in tight, shallow bursts, but all of their health bars stretched back into the green.

“You’re welcome,” Steel said dryly, giving Jade’s shoulder a pat of finality.

“Thanks, Steel,” yelled Tyrian without looking back, elbow deep in the tatzlwyrm’s belly. They removed all the loot they could find: coin, jewelry, a pewter drinking stein, and a watertight scroll tube.

Jade, fully healed by the channeled energy, crawled to her feet and followed the cleric to the fighter’s side. Steel plucked the sticky scroll tube off the sand and popped it open. She unrolled the parchment with a low whistle.

Two notifications popped into Jade’s HUD. One marked the completion of the tatzlwyrm quest, the collectable bounty grayed and struck out with the razing of the Post. The second was massive update to the northern Greenbelt’s map.


	5. A Stage Set for Slaughter

Tanger and Daffi half-climbed, half-dragged themselves up onto the bank. They collapsed, muddied and soaked to the bone on the stones.

Tanger rolled over onto his back. Behind him, blackened trees reached their skeletal arms upside-down through the gray whorls of smoke and fog. It was an eerie sight, but instantly grounded by the pop-up of two notifications in his HUD.

“Daffi, are you seeing this?” he asked, scrolling through the vastly updated map. Every site-marker in the beta had to be included on that thing.

The rogue nodded, also on their back. Their fingers wiggled in the air over their head as they fidgeted with their own display. “There are only two major quests left.”

“Bandits and kobolds. Once they’re finished...the beta will have to end!” said Tanger, sitting straight up. “We’ll be logged out! Forced out!”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” said Daffi, sitting up on their hands. “Shit! What are we waiting for?”

“Yeah! Time to get some kobolds!”

“Kobolds? Really? You don’t wanta, like, gather our collective forces and take out the forest-torching bandits first?”

“It’s not like they can torch it again. Besides, I got unfinished business with the Sootscales.”

“What business?”

“I killed four of them and they still stiffed me out of the bounty.”

Daffi snorted in amusement. “You’re a punny man, Tanger.”

“Not as punny as though kobolds are about to be.”

“You know what? I take that one back.”

#*#*#*#*

Seafa’s naked body jounced up and down on the saddle as her horse trotted with the rest of the riderless animals between bandits at the front and back. The hobble had been removed from her ankles and replaced with ropes binding her chest against one flank of the horse and her thighs against the other. Byza and Maya, similarly trussed and gagged, jounced on the horses to either side of hers.

The bandits followed a narrow, winding path out of the forest and up a hillside devoid of all shrubbery save for patches of thorny vines on the hard-packed earth. From Seafa’s vantage point, she couldn’t tell there was a SECOND repurposed fort at its peak until they were in the shadow of its fifteen-foot palisade.

“Who goes there?” drawled a low, bored voice.

“By the Bloody Bones of St. Gilmorg, who wants to know?” Bydon growled back.

The bandit guard didn’t even bother with a reply. The heavy wooden doors creaked open to a barren, dusty yard separating the palisade from the inner buildings. They were stone, much to Seafa’s dismay. There’d be no poetic justice in this beta, and it was all the more flawed for it.

The bandits dismounted. Rather than hacking through the ropes, they unbound the captive players. And let them fall from the horses onto their bare, battered asses.

Seafa rolled and hobbled to her knees. Bydon yanked her leash, toppling her to the dust all over again. She grit her teeth and scraped herself back up.

“This way, cumdump,” Bydon growled.

She had no choice but to stumble after him to the fort’s central tower. Thick stone walls surrounded a cracked, crumbling platform of heavy stone. Large chunks of the roof had collapsed, shattering into the hall below. 

Sunlight pierced the dark interior here and there, beaming through the pockets of ruin. In the shadows, a man draped long, muscled limbs over a wooden throne. He didn’t move an inch at their entrance, which kept his face entirely shrouded.

Bydon kicked Seafa in the back of her knees. She yelped and fell all the way onto her face.

“This one’s been nothing but trouble,” said Bydon. “Thought we’d give her to the Green Queen.”

The man rose as slow and languorous as a predatory cat. His head lowered, he stepped into the light. Small clouds of dust poofed up from under the hooves before Seafa’s eyes. The shifter’s breath caught in her throat.

The Stag Lord was covered in short, sleek tan fur across his entire body. Except for his head, which was entirely fleshless as well. He had only the skull of a stag, complete with sharp, branched antlers. Hollow, empty pits for eyes appraised the captive.

“A shifter for the Green Queen,” a soft, low voice rang from his skull. “She will be pleased.”

#*#*#*#*

Cyber woke with a splitting headache, sturdy wooden bars digging into their back. Their wrists and ankles were bound spreadeagle to the corners of a wide, long, but very short cage. The tip of their nose was a hair’s breadth from the top bars.

As their eyes adjusted to the torch-lit darkness, the details of Cyber’s prison came into focus. They were in a cave, the walls painted with sharp-toothed, reptilian devils. Two low, stone stables sat at the center of the chamber, one of which was darkly stained.

It could be worse. Cyber could be dead. But dying in the game might be the only way to force their logout apart from completing the beta. So, no, this couldn’t get any worse.

Clawed feet scraped over the stone. Cyber jerked reflexively, but the ropes kept their limbs completely open and vulnerable. A kobold walked toward the cage with a stained wooden pail in one hand and a coarse brush in the other.

“Please, please, you don’t have to do this,” said Cyber. “Just let me go and I swear I won’t tell anyone where your cave is.”

The kobold froze in mid-step. “People are looking for us?”

“...no?”

“Oh, good.” The kobold set the bucket down with a clunk at the side of the cage. They dipped the brushed in. It came up suspiciously red.

“That’s blood, isn’t it?”

“...yes.”

#*#*#*#*

The map updates allowed Jade and her new companions to a safe resting place, a semi-active shrine of Erastil. The fifteen-foot-tall stone statue was hard to miss even overgrown at the base.

“Time to reactivate it,” said Steel, drawing her dagger. She hacked and sawed at the shrubbery on one side of the stag-headed humanoid.

Tyrian took the other side, swinging their falchion precariously close to the cleric. Jade, effectively weaponless, stood back with eyebrows raised. One or both of those geniuses had forgotten that until this site got that sweet green line, they were still in danger of friendly fire.

But they got the job done without maiming each other, and the tension finally eased from Jade's shoulders. The two stepped back and observed their haphazard but sufficient work.

“Anyone wanna say a few words?” asked Jade, mostly joking.

Steel cleared her throat. “Erastil, you're not my god in this world or the next, but I appreciate you keeping all baddies out of this place in exchange for a little sprucing.”

“I'll libate to that,” said Tyrian, patting their rucksack pockets. They came up with a flask and poured one out at the base of the statue. “Nature gods like water, right?”

“You might as well as just pissed on him,” said Jade.

“That green line says 'no, water accepted.’”

As did the notification popping into their HUDs. All weapons in the shrine had just been spelled with keen, doubling their crit range for the next twenty-four hours.

“Thanks, Old Deadeye, my deer-man,” said Tyrian. “I will seriously consider praying and/or cursing to you in future.”

Jade shook her head. That god sure knew how to pick 'em. She laid down in a bare, dirt corner of the shrine. “Guess I'll see you in the afternoon.”

“Slaughter o'clock,” muttered Steel, laying down herself.

“I just realized I haven't taken a piss since…”

Jade selected “rest.” She was out before having to suffer any more of Tyrian's excitement-induced ramblings.


	6. Contains Rape

Some time after the blood-paint dried over Cyber's entire body, a drum beat in the deep. The shifter raised their head, red flaking off their neck.

The kobolds entered in a single-foot procession. The head, presumably their chief by their unwieldy crown of sticks, stopped at the top corner of Cyber's cage. Next was a kobold in the soiled, oversized robes of a much taller mage. Cyber recognized the five lining up beside them as their captors and the painter. The final kobold continued to beat their drum until taking their place at the foot of the cage.

“Deer-human!” boomed the chief in as low a pitch as their little larynx could manage. “I have decided to spare your life as long as you become our new cum toilet!”

At the risk of knowing, Cyber asked, “What happened to the last one?”

“Nobody speak of Cum Toilet #1 and Tartuk the Eloper!”

“Yes, chief!” crowed the kobolds.

“And no more questions! It is time for the virgin bloodening!”

“I'm not a virgin, not even in this world.”

“That’s not important,” said the caster. “Chief just means we're going to fuck you until all the blood comes off.”

“That's right,” said the chief. “Drummer! Beat us a tune!”

With their dick in one hand, the drummer banged out a surprisingly frenzied rhythm. The kobolds clambered onto the cage as one. Four kobolds converged on Cyber’s head. Three converged on their crotch.

The tiny draconic humanoids plunged a cock into each ear and two in Cyber’s screaming mouth. The painter and mage shoved their dicks into Cyber’s clenched anus. The chief fell upon Cyber’s dick, rubbing and humping it through the wooden bars of the cage.

Cyber’s bound, caged body thrashed under the multitude of simultaneous, penetrating assaults. They couldn’t hear their own cock-gagged shrieks as the kobolds tore through their double-stuffed ass thanks to the dicks plugging and pistoning in their ears. 

Despite the cocks ripping their body apart from their fleshy pocket and seams, their dick was helpless to the chief’s sucking and frotting. It stiffened with a mind of its own, one bent to the whim of the kobold chief.

The chief jumped on their stuffed prisoner’s dick. They squealed, their body’s tiny anus screwing down over Cyber’s much larger cock as they slid slow to the hilt. The chief bucked and jerked on the impaling dick, their tail lashing uncontrollably with their sundered anal walls pressed so firm against their belly that the shape of Cyber’s dick was visible through their scaled skin.

It was too much for the kobold chief. Their body erupted into tail-whipping spasms around Cyber’s wall-ripping cock. Cum exploded from the kobold chief’s own hardened dick, splattering onto Cyber’s blood-painted belly.

Cyber couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything but the endless thrusts, stuffing and tearing their shafts. Their body was nothing but a fleshy lump of spiked heat. Then the kobold anus seized around their dick.

That hot, impossibly tight squeeze wrang the seed from their tortured dick. Cyber gushed into the kobold chief’s quivering anus and was in turn flooded with cum in the ears, mouth, and asshole. Their shafts were filled to such a brimming tautness that the shifter couldn’t tell when the kobolds pulled out.

Nor could they hear the first sounds of battle.

#*#*#*#*

With the kobolds so obliviously engaged, Tanger and Daffi ran right past the sweating drummer. Tanger’s falchion severed the head from a kobold in Cyber’s mouth. Daffi’s twin daggers sliced the throat of a kobold in their anus.

Blood splattered the rut-twisted faces of the kobolds. Before they could register their shock, the rogue slashed a fatal cross through the chief’s neck. The stick-crowned kobold slumped on Cyber’s cock.

The kobolds screeched. The one in mage’s robes thrust a clawed hand at Daffi. “Fear for your life!”

“Don’t listen!” roared Tanger, loping another head from a kobold body.

The kobolds remaining pulled out from their captive and grabbed for their spears. 

Too slow. Daffi swung their dagger out behind them. The blade buried into the skull of the spear-wielding drummer, preempting their flank attempt.

The mage vanished into thin air. The two remaining kobolds panicked. They screamed and charged. Running themselves onto Tanger’s falchion and Daffi’s waiting daggers.

“Do you see that mage?” asked Tanger, flinging the body off his blade.

Daffi looked from side to side, shaking the blood from either dagger. “Looks like they got away. Does that mean the quest…”

A notification popped into the players’ HUDs. The Sootscale quest was successfully cleared. Tanger pumped his fists in the air. “Kobolds, cancelled!”

“Yay,” rasped the blooded and bukkakked prisoner in the kobolds’ cage.

“Fuck, sorry, we’re getting you out of there,” said Tanger, dropping to a crouch. 

As he hacked through the binding ropes, Daffi picked the lock. Fighter and rogue helped the hapless Cyber up, supporting them under the arms.

“Your health’s alright, but do you need a rest?” asked Daffi.

“Maybe...not here,” said Cyber. They spat a goopy mix of blood, seed, and saliva onto the cave floor.

As they walked and hobbled toward the door, a glint in the dim light caught Tanger’s eye. “Daffi, take Cyber for a sec.”

“Wha…”

Tanger ducked out from under their arm, letting Cyber slump into the confused rogue. He jogged and slid into a squat by a pile of shiny loot.

Like crows, most of the what the kobolds hoarded was a bunch of worthless shiny. But there was actual coin in there along with a pair of sneaky boots and a scroll that had to be magic. He tossed the boots to Daffi.

Daffi, having no hands not full of former captive, watched unamused as the boots thwacked into their side and fell to the ground. “Thanks, Tanger.”

“Cyber, I think your gear’s here, too.”

“Hide armor...buckler...backpack?” The gear of a shifter.

“Yep. Don’t worry, I won’t throw ‘em,” said Tanger, picking up the gear and returning to the shifter’s side.

This time, it was Daffi who let go of the wobbling Cyber to pick up the boots. Tanger, however, simply scooped the shifter whole-ass into his arm and carried them out of the cave.


	7. Contains Rape

The Stag Lord led Seafa by the leash out behind the central tower followed by Bydon and two of the bandits, leaving two with Maya and Byza. Seafa didn’t envy the casters, but the mossy and weirdly slimey grove out here wasn’t exactly inspiring courage. 

The sickly, slightly swaying vegetation absorbed the sound of every footfall. At the center of the grove was a rectangular block of knotted roots, an altar. A sacrificial altar.

Seafa dug in her heels into the grass, shifting to hooves for better bracing. “No, no, ngh!”

With a mighty yank, the Stag Lord dragged her forward by the throat, the collar choking off the shifter’s protest. Seafa fell to her face on the green earth. Two bandits grabbed her by the bound arms and threw her onto the altar, crushing her face-down into the roots.

Seafa grunted, the air forced from her lungs. She shifted her head to the side, catching sight of the Stag Lord with both arms aloft.

“Nyrissa, Queen of the First World’s Thousand Breaths,” said the Stag Lord, his voice ringing through the grove, “we, your humble servitors, offer this shifter to your glory.”

The grove dropped into even deeper silence. All swaying stilled. With her heart pounding soundlessly in her ears, Seafa turned her head to the other side of the altar. The blood curdled in her veins.

A mass of tangled vines and dripping slime rose on two trunk-like legs, reeking of rot and freshly turned earth. The shambling mound, nine feet tall and nearly four thousand pounds, lumbered forward. The earth quaked with every step.

The hands lifted off of Seafa, all three bandits rushing back behind the Stag Lord and his side of the altar. The shifter was too terrified to roll onto her side. A thick, slimey vine wrapped around her naked midsection and lifted her as light as a feather into the air. Seafa screamed.

A second vine plunged its thick, slimey girth down her throat. Seafa choked and gagged, eyes tearing as the vine thrust like a cock in her over-stuffed throat. Her bound body uselessly squirmed and jerked in the mound’s constricting grip.

The vines parted over the mound’s trunk-like body, revealing a giant, slimey wooden cock. Seafa’s eyes bulged in fear before blurring in pain as the shambling mound jammed her asshole over its massive dick.

Seafa choked, her entire body shaking, spit dribbling from the corners of her stuffed mouth as her eyes rolled back into her skull. The mound worked her clenching anus up and down its trunk-like cock, her legs kicking and hips bucking with each forced impalement. Its girth ripped her apart, crushing her walls against her coccyx and shaft of her quivering cunt.

Just when she couldn’t take another prod, her anus raped to a nervous pulp, the shambling mound switched holes, ramming its giant girth up her tight, empty pussy.

The writhing shifter screeched through her running nose. Her pussy, suddenly and inconceivably full, went into pure, electrifying shock. Her shaft squeezed as desperately as rigid death around the mound’s agonizing cock. Her body bent backward in its slimey, coiled grip, her spine clenching to the base of her skull as her body wracked with orgasm after orgasm.

Thick, sappy cum exploded into her wracking pussy, swelling her like a balloon from the womb. Her strengthless legs twitched on either side of the mound’s pumping dick, slick oozing down her soft inner thighs.

#*#*#*#*

Jade squeezed her eyes shut when Tyrian tossed their makeshift grappling hook over the palisade wall. Metal clanked against wood. The sound echoed in her ears. But no bandits swarmed.

The answer became clear when they crept down the steps of a watchtower on the other side. Two players, “Maya” and “Byza,” were tied and bent over a stained wooden table with two laughing bandits preoccupied in their assholes.

They were, in fact, so preoccupied that they didn’t hear the armored fighter and cleric walk up behind them. Blood splattered onto Maya and Byza’s bound hands and backsides. Steel and Tyrian dumped the slumping bodies to the ground, seed spewing from their cocks and the two captives’ holes.

“You’re gonna alright,” Steel whispered, cutting through Maya’s bonds. The girl nodded vigorously through a flood of relieved tears.

“Did you see? This is the last quest,” whispered Tyrian, slicing through Byza’s. “We’re almost home.”

“A-almost home,” croaked Byza, their throat choked with emotion rather than cock for the first time in what must’ve felt like an eternity.

“And I think that’s your gear,” said Jade, pointing at a haphazard pile in the corner. Despite the first success, she counted the seconds as Steel and Tyrian helped the sorcerer into her robes and the cleric into their armor. “You ready? Cause we need to end this before they sniff us out.”

Maya nodded.

“Let’s go,” said Byza, their voice weak but steady.

There was no one in the central tower, but a monstrous sight awaited them as they crept into the shadows of the grove out back. Three bandits and a deer humanoid stood before an altar of roots watching a giant, living shrubbery fuck the living daylights out of poor player.

“I don’t think so,” growled Jade, shoving clawed hands out at the bandits and their Stag Lord. A forty foot ring of weeds and grasses glowed green and twisted at her bidding.

Two bandits ran out from her grasp, but her grasses caught hold of one and the Stag Lord himself. And right past Steel’s dagger. The cleric struck mercilessly, raking a deep gash into one bandit’s arm.

The bandit hissed but drew a longsword along with his mate. They stood back to back, taking on Steel on one side and Tyrian on the other.

“Isn’t this funny,” said Maya, thrusting a hand at the wounded bandit.

In answer, he collapsed into gales of manic laughter. And fell prone. Byza stepped in with a wicked slash, but the bleeding bandit continued to laugh himself to pissing.

Tyrian swung his falchion in a vicious arc, but the crack of bone sent the blade clanging against the standing bandit’s. Seafa’s helpless body twitched and jerked in the shambling mound’s bone-breaking grip.

“You should be more concerned for your own well-being,” said the Stag Lord, his furred fingers flexing in a cast of his own.

A summoning circle opened on the ground behind Tyrian. Before he could react, an ant the size of a pony shattered through. Its dripping mandibles clashed off the fighter’s armored back.

“Too bad your own men can’t take you seriously,” snarked Jade, pointing two fingers at the bandit on Tyrian’s front. He dropped in a gale of giggles.

“Nice,” grunted Steel, slashing at the laughing bandit at her feet.

Only...Jade’s bandit shrugged off her spell, rolling back up to his feet. And the entangled bandit slipped free of her grass, running out behind Steel.

“I don’t think so,” said Maya, hitting the freed bandit with the same hideous laughter that dropped his friends.

Behind the altar, bone crunched again, Seafa’s head lolling. Blood ran down the mound’s vines.

Tyrian hissed, but their sword arced true. The ant behind him flew apart in two, oozing halves. They shattered like their summoning circle before touching the ground.

“Seems I picked the wrong target. It won’t happen again,” said the Stag Lord, turning his clawed hand toward Maya. A summoning circle opened above her, a swarm of hundreds of shrieking bats flying down upon her.

Maya shrieked, batting uselessly at the bats. 

“MotherFUCKER!” yelled Jade. That could’ve been her. She whipped an arm out toward the Stag Lord. Rings of dazing green clamped around his stag’s head. He was out, for now.

Steel plunged her dagger into the chest of the wounded bandit, putting him out for good. While Tyrian and Byza tangled with the last two bandits, the shambling mound crushed Seafa from hp red to dead. It dropped her unrecognizable body atop the altar, the last of her blood leaking down each knotted side.

Jade pried her eyes from the gristly sight to the Stag Lord. That dazing spell wouldn’t hold. Her eyes drifted toward the screaming Maya.

It was do or die. Jade gulped and ran. Toward the dazed boss. She slammed her fist into his furry chest. “Lighten up, doe-fucker.”

The Stag Lord’s eyes widened. The corners of his mouth twitched. He didn’t fall, but he burst into a fit of laughter, weakly swatting her hand away.

“Kill those fucking bandits and get your asses over here!” screamed Jade.

Steel, Tyrian, and Byza complied. As best they could. Steel and Byza stabbed as hard as they could and ran. Only Tyrian managed to lop the head off their bandit.

Jade scrambled back as the Stag Lord shook off the fading fit of laughter. As Steel, Tyrian, and Byza trapped the Stag Lord in a cage of clashing steel, an iron coldness punched through Jade’s own chest.

She looked over her shoulder, gurgling blood. The last bandit, huffing and leaking red himself. She reached her an arm out behind her. Her twisted fingers fell short.

“Ragh!” The bandit twisted his blade inside the sorceror’s body. She slumped forward, dropping to the still grass with a hole gaping from front to back.

He’d really...he’d really fucked her up. But as her vision faded into darkness, her mouth curled into the slightest smile. Jade was going home.

(She wasn’t.)


	8. The Epilogue from Hell

The grove dropped into deathly silence as the Stag Lord fell to the grass. Steel, Tyrian, and Byza looked up from the body, their own splattered in more blood than a butcher’s. The shambling mound had vanished somehow into the tight pack of trees. The only sound in the grove came from their own ragged breath.

Maya dropped to her knees behind them, finally freed of the Stag Lord’s summoned bats. Only Jade and Seafa’s bodies hadn’t moved. They were gone, beyond all hope of healing.

Miles away from the bandit’s stronghold, Tanger and Daffi walked Cyber out between them into a forest clearing. Dusk had fallen, quashing the last rays of daylight to a spray of pinks and orange over the treeline. The first stars twinkled in that first breath of blue night.

All across the Stolen Lands, two notifications popped into the displays of all twenty-seven players left living. The first indicated the completion of the final quest. The second prompted a simple question, “Timeskip? [Y]/[N].”

“We’ve come this far,” said Tanger. “What’s another five minutes of happily ever-after cutscene?”

Daffi scratched their head. “I guess. Still a pain in the ass.”

“Alright, wrap up and go,” muttered Cyber, selecting “[Y].”

Almost every player accepted the timeskip under the assumption of some heartwarming epilogue thanks to their heroic deeds. They were in for a nasty surprise, but not one as nasty as those five players who selected “[N]” for “no, get me the hell out of here right this fucking instant.”

In truth, there was no logout from Dungeon Online. The level-up accompanying each player’s selection hardly made up for their new, inescapable condition.

**Author's Note:**

> Real Deathed 5 of 32  
> Cardinal, cleric, he/him  
> Garn, fighter, he/him  
> Amber, rogue, he/him or they/them  
> Seafa, shifter, they/them or she/her  
> Jade, sorcerer, they/them or she/her


End file.
